Bring Your Own Team

Now here is an interesting idea: front-loading an aquihire by hiring a functioning team rather that a single person. As many of us know developers travel in packs anyway (I have worked with many former colleagues at new places) so bringing on a pre-existing team is an interesting idea.

Some immediate thoughts:

Developers might travel in packs, but it is usually over time and not all at once. If you imagine an entire team leaving a company this seems very disruptive; the entire idea makes more sense for people that have shifted to consulting but tend to still work with a core group.

Navigating the waters of interviewing people individually vs. as a group: do you do traditional “tell me about your resume” interviews (ugh) or have them do a pilot project as a team?

What do you do when you like half of the team? Once it is time to make the hire / no-hire you might find that one person doesn’t fit your expectations but is crucial to the overall team’s output.

On that subject the post mentions engineering being the main focus, but what non-code-writing roles will they end up hiring for? Would the person to lead the team be a pre-existing Stripe team member?

Hiring an entire team means you could need work carved out for them already (this is hard apart from greenfield projects)

Maintaining your culture would be harder as they would have a stronger pull towards whatever team culture they have already built.

Interesting idea; and some interesting feedback on the Hacker New comments.